Click here to access this Lesson Plan in a printable pdf format
CLICK HERE to access A PDF OF THE HANDOUT THAT ACCOMPANIES THIS LESSON PLAN
Summary
While Andrea Rubin lay unconscious and severely burned after a car fire, her father told doctors to do everything they could to keep her alive. She would need many surgeries to survive and if she did survive her injuries would greatly affect her quality of life. Her friends were outraged; they told the doctors that Andrea would not want to live under those circumstances. The question of whether to continue to treat Andrea was only possible because Andrea was being kept alive on a ventilator, a medical innovation that became widely available in the late 1960s. In this Podcast episode, listeners hear how families and doctors make life and death medical decisions for patients incapable of deciding for themselves.
This Lesson Plan facilitates discussions about patient autonomy, medical decision making, and conflict resolution in the hospital setting. Students will examine ethics concepts used when patients cannot make decisions for themselves. They will research policies related to surrogate decision making, explore the role of clinical ethicists and hospital ethics committees in difficult medical decisions, and articulate their own viewpoints on surrogate medical decision making.
Discussion Guide
The following Assessment Questions can be used by instructors to evaluate student comprehension of Andrea’s story and the bioethics concepts featured in the Podcast episode. The Discussion Questions can prompt students to make claims, and provide evidence and their reasoning. Student comprehension and views can be assessed before and after listening to the episode and/or participating in the group role play activity.
Sample Activities
Careers Mentioned
- Firefighter
- Paramedic
- Doctor
- Bioethicist: Monica Gerrek, PhD (clinical ethics expert) and Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH (philosopher)
- Social Worker
- Psychologist
- Psychiatrist
- Lawyer (hospital legal department)
- Nurse
- Patient Advocate
About this Lesson Plan
Authors
Amelia Hood, MA
Mrigaanka Sharma
Editors
Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH
Anna Mastroianni, JD, MPH
Advisor
Dorothy Holley, PhD
The authors thank Pamela Hamm, MEd, director of the Johns Hopkins SARE program, and her students for their valuable contributions in the pilot phase of this Lesson Plan. We also thank Dorothy Holley, PhD, and Janice West for piloting this lesson plan at the North Carolina STEM Teachers Association Conference.
The playing god? in the classroom resources are free and open to use for non-commercial purposes. For other uses and more information, please contact [email protected].
To develop these materials, the Berman Institute has collaborated with a group of teachers participating in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program, which provides accomplished K-12 STEM educators the opportunity to spend 11 months working in federal agencies or in U.S. Congressional offices, applying their extensive knowledge and classroom experiences to national education program and/or education policy efforts. Eight of the Fellows, drawn from public and private schools across the country, formed an advisory board that is helping shape, review, and pilot the educational materials.
The playing god? podcast is a production of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab. Season One was co-produced with Pushkin Industries with support from the Greenwall Foundation.
© 2024 Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
The Podcast Episode and this lesson plan are not designed to answer patient-specific clinical, professional, legal, or ethical questions. Information contained herein is not intended as a substitute for professional consultation.